Releasing hope into the world
Sunrise on Big Bald Mountain slices through a brooding sky as gray as catbirds. A Chestnut-sided Warbler sings with swift dexterity. Each note enunciates the emerald grassy ridges punctuated by flame azaleas. I stretch my arms, aching from helping lug a box filled with bird-banding gear. The dawn kindles like a flicker feather upon the rolling Appalachian Mountains.
The Big Bald Banding Station sits alongside the Appalachian Trail, on the border of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina and within a globally imperiled ecosystem. I’ve arrived at the intersection of hiking, science, and wonder.
My hand lingers on a wooden post with its white blaze — the signature trail marker for the 2,200-mile continuous footpath from Georgia to Maine. At last, I’d come from Oregon to immerse myself in the birdlife my father enjoyed when he backpacked this section in the 1980s.
In the pre-dawn of a late June day, I’d already heard the chorded serenades of Veery and Hermit Thrush, two of his favorites. Blue-headed Vireos, Canada Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, Eastern Towhees, and an uncommon Black-billed Cuckoo also tune the cool air at 5,400 feet above sea level.
Mark Hopey reminds me a bit of my father, Dave Richie, who served as the Appalachian Trail Project Manager during the trail’s pivotal era of land acquisitions in the 1970s and ’80s. I can imagine them in easy companionship. Hopey, program director for the Southern Appalachian Raptor Research Association, even has a similar twinkle in his eye. Like my father had been in his early 60s, Hopey
